Ching: Rivalry always provides surprises

If there is one thing to appreciate about the recent history of the Georgia-Georgia Tech series, it's the unpredictability.

That feels like an odd thing to type, considering how the game's annual outcome has been so easy to predict over the last 20 or so years.

But despite Georgia's overwhelming dominance in the win column - the Bulldogs have won seven in a row and 14 of the last 17 against the Yellow Jackets - those victories have often come about in the most unlikely ways.

There are too many examples from just the last few years to mention all of them, so let's just use one game as an example.

Remember the last time Tech visited Sanford Stadium?

When Georgia linebacker Tony Taylor somehow pulled a loose ball out of a mass of humanity and returned the fumble for the game's first touchdown? Or how Georgia cornerback Paul Oliver squared up on Tech's all-world receiver Calvin Johnson and somehow held him to just two catches for 13 yards?

Or in the final two minutes of the game, when a pair of maligned Bulldogs, Matthew Stafford and Mohamed Massaquoi, connected for both the game-winning touchdown pass and two-point conversion?

Stafford struggled for much of that 2006 season, experiencing the common growing pains of a true freshman quarterback learning on the job.

After a promising freshman season, Massaquoi had struggled as a sophomore. At one point that year, his problems with dropped passes got him booed off the field by lowlifes who supposedly showed up to support Massaquoi's team.

And yet the duo paired up for two of the most crucial plays of the day, helping the Bulldogs eek out a 15-12 victory.

The dramatics allowed Georgia play-by-play man Larry Munson to deliver yet another set of memorable calls on one of the final evenings of classic old-school Munson and his traditional radio gold.

The gravelly voiced legend's reaction to the Massaquoi's acrobatic touchdown catch - "My God, a touchdown!" - seemed as if he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing, either.

So it seems fitting on a day where the university plans to honor Munson, who retired in September after 42-plus years as Georgia's radio announcer, that it's impossible to have any notion of how today's game between the two in-state rivals will play out.

Neither team provides any logical idea of what to expect from week to week.

Georgia followed perhaps its best offensive outing of the season, a 52-38 win at LSU, by laying an egg the very next week. The Bulldogs failed to score a meaningful touchdown in a 49-10 slaying by Florida in Jacksonville.

On the other end of the rivalry, when Paul Johnson's triple-option offense is executed in textbook fashion, it looks exactly as it did in Tech's most recent outing - a 41-23 dismantling of Miami where the Jackets rushed for a whopping 472 yards.

Only a game before, Tech's offense committed three back-breaking turnovers in an embarrassing 28-7 loss to North Carolina.

With the two teams' up-and-down seasons in mind, today's game stands as a bit of a quandary. Will the Tech team that defeated Florida State for the first time since 1975 show up? Or will it be the one that needed to block a field goal in the final seconds to beat Gardner Webb, 10-7?

Will the Georgia team that systematically defeated Arizona State arrive? Or will it be the one that struggled on offense and downright stunk on defense in falling behind Alabama 31-0 by halftime the following week?

No telling.

The way Georgia's defense has struggled lately and the way its offense has run up at least 40 points in a contest six times this season suggest that there might be a high-scoring game today between the hedges.

Which is exactly why it will probably wind up 14-7, with points scored only in the most ridiculous fashions.

As schizophrenic as these two teams can be, it would be unreasonable to expect anything normal.